Music is a mystery for people who play it, write it, listen to it, and write about it. The only thing I can really do when I try to say something about music is assume.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

The Vienna Opera Finally Enters the 21st Century

Sometimes it seems like it was only yesterday that I was in Vienna, engaged in a long conversation with a violinist from the Vienna Opera Orchestra who told me that music was no profession for a woman. Indeed, in the Vienna of the early 1980s, there were only a few performing organizations in Vienna that even considered hiring women. Now the Vienna Opera has appointed Albena Danailova as its concertmaster, which means a great deal to those who have endured the backward-looking attitudes towards women in the European orchestras.

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I am active as a composer, a violist, a violinist, a recorder player, and as a teacher. I began my professional musical life as a flutist, and spent a lot of quality time as a baroque flutist, but I no longer have my baroque flute. Now my modern flute spends most of its time tucked away in a drawer, while my violin, viola, and my viola d'amore are often tucked under my chin.